Unspoken Words
by Cadagan
Summary: After a grueling journey to find his Son, the Sole Survivor returns to Sanctuary, and to the Vault.
1. Chapter 1

Unspoken Words

The Wanderer strode back into Sanctuary, and though he almost glowed blue in the sun, the day was dark. The settlers, all of whom owed this man their lives, waved hearty greetings his way, but the man's head didn't rise. Sturges and Preston, the two who knew where he'd gone, rushed up to him.

"General, you're okay," Preston said, breathing out the tension of waiting. The Vault Dweller didn't stop his stride, continuing down the road as if the place was as dead as they'd found it. "The damn machine blew up, after you were gone. Did you…" Preston shared a worried glance with Sturges. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

The Soul Survivor stopped, noticing his friends for the first time, giving them a glare devoid of anything they could fathom. "Here's your tape." He held out the holotape Sturges had given him, more than a week before. Sturges took it, giving it a quick look over, and by the time he glanced up again, the Vault Dweller was walking again. The settlers gathered around, watching their General walk into his old house, and shut the door.

…

"Thanks for coming," Preston said, as he led Piper and Nick over the bridge. Having a synth so close wasn't a comfortable experience for Preston, but then again, Piper wasn't so relaxing either. Still, none of that mattered now. "We've barely got a word out of him since he got back. I don't even know if he's eaten. I just thought…"

"It's alright, son. We get it."

"Not a problem. We'll straighten him out, whatever it is. Right Nick?" Despite the situation, Piper was as upbeat as Preston had heard.

"Yeah, We'll uh…" Nick stopped, looking over the houses. "Is that him?" He followed the metal, skeletal finger's direction, and saw the familiar shade of blue climbing the hill, towards the vault.

…

The elevator stopped, and the gate lifted with an eerie screech. The dust flew in the air as the heavy machinery worked. Further ahead, however, it was left undisturbed, save for two sets of foot prints; one headed out, looking faded, and one headed in.

"Has anyone but him been in here? Y'know, since he got out?" Nick asked, his fingers clacking against his revolver.

"No." Preston cranked two shots into his musket. "At least, not that I know of."

"Aw who're we kidding," Piper said, her grin a little too frigid in her face, "whatever's in here, I'm sure Blue's already handled it."

"Hmm." Nick led them up the stairs, not even wanting to hold onto the railings. None of them had ever expected him to come back here, but somehow, they all knew it was inevitable.

The old halls of Vault 111 made your back itch. They found the first skeleton on the ground, the body left there to rot for centuries, but it wasn't the rotted corpses that put the speed in their step, it was the fresh ones, the frozen ones. Not a word was said, but they all looked through the window at the dozens of cryogenic pods. Wanderer's neighbors, maybe even friends. None of them knew, none of them had asked.

Nick stopped for a moment, looking down the hall, then continued, his boots placed lightly against what had quickly become hallowed ground. There, at the end of the chamber before them, sat the Vault Dweller, his legs curled up against his chest, his eyes heavy and wide open. Before him, a cryogenic pod sat open. For some reason, seeing the Wanderer like that, the man that had faced the Commonwealth and come back unscarred, Nick forgot, for a moment.

"Now that's not… oh. Oh, I'm so sorry." Nick circled his friend, his eyes fixed the perfectly preserved corpse.

"Is," Piper began, her smile nowhere to be found, "is that who I think it is?" She swallowed, unable to keep her eyes on the woman that used to be in her place, or the hole in that woman's head. "You okay?"

Blue didn't say anything, he just sat there, holding his legs tight. He wasn't crying, or even shaking, he was just sitting there watching his wife's body thaw.

"Listen," Nick turned to his friend, kneeling down to him. "I know this is difficult. If you tell us what happened, at the Institute I mean…" Nick almost gasped, so desperate for the words. "Maybe we could help?"

The Vault Dweller looked down, for the first time, and some unknowable thought flittered past his eyes. It was more than a moment before he spoke. "You know, I hadn't even thought about her, since I left here." He paused, and the silence flooded the room. "I needed to find Shaun, to get my son back, and… and, well, I found him." Piper and Preston sat on the ground, as quietly as they could. "It hasn't been ten years. It's been sixty." He spat the last word out, back at the world.

"Damn," Nick breathed.

"Oh, god." Piper whimpered.

"He's been there the whole time." It wasn't sadness in his voice. "He's been the one behind it all." It was anger. "All those people at University Point. All those missing persons reports. He did it. He," the word trickled off into some sick version of a chuckle. "He played some sick trick. Showed me a synth of his younger self. Said he wanted to see what would happen. And…" With gritted teeth, he forced his eyes up again, into the fresh wound in his beloved's skull. "And I asked him, what he thought, about what the Institute did. About what Kellogg did to his mother." Another tragic smile appeared on his face, and he continued with gritted teeth. "He didn't, care." The Vault Dweller shook his head, there was nothing else to be said.

"What can we do for you, General?" Preston broke the silence, after it ruled for a few minutes. "What do you need?"

The Vault Dweller took a few breaths, and unwilling tears began trickling down his face. "I need to bury my wife."


	2. Chapter 2

Words Spoken, Unwanted

[Writer's note: I just wanted to let people know what I'm trying to do here. In the story of Fallout 4, I felt like as soon as you found Shaun, the whole Family aspect was put to the side. Shaun says hi, introduces himself, then tells you what he needs. I wanted to try and flesh out what I thought should have been said. You never get to see the Sole Survivor dealing with his wife's death. Only a few lines of Dialogue show him struggle with Shaun's revelations, and actions. My first play-through, I went with the institute, not because I thought they were right, but because I was desperate what would happen between the two characters. Since not much did, I'm writing it here. Of course, it also helps that I got fairly good feedback (I've been writing for a while, but this is one of the first things I've ever actually posted) so, thanks for that. Enjoy.]

The halls of the institute were flush with the sounds of war. Shaun couldn't see much, other than the fireworks of miss-shot lasers, but the sounds were more than enough for his taste. He knew exactly what had happened, but deep in his heart, he couldn't help but ask, 'Why?'

His answers were coming. He heard his father's footsteps coming down the hall. Dressed in his armored Vault Suit, a primed musket in his hands, the Sole Survivor of Vault 111, of the Institute, stepped into the room.

"Shaun."

"I didn't expect to see you again. Come to see the reactor, have you? We got it working without you." His father removed his helmet, but said nothing. Shaun's heart couldn't be quiet any longer. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

The Wanderer leaned his musket against Shaun's deathbed, and considered the aged face before him. "You've justified everything you've done. It's all been for the greater good, for the Institute. Except nothing you've done has been to help people, it's been to save humanity." He stopped, shaking his head as he searched for words. "I've been out there, and humanity doesn't want your help."

"That's not for that uneducated, afflicted mass above ground to decide." Shaun couldn't help keep the anger in check, despite the pain it caused him. "They're already doomed, and now, we all are." He'd never felt so frail, or pained.

"It's not for you to decide either, Shaun. You—"

"Oh, spare me," Shaun growled. After everything he'd done for the man, his own father, this is the betrayal of a reward he received. The pain of knowing he would die, and all his friends, his work would die with him, hurt more than anything else had in his long life. And to see that father looking down on him, with those calm, sad, unjudging eyes… It was too much to bear. "Why? Why are you doing this? Am I not the son you've been searching for?"

"No." The words seemed to come easily to the Wanderer, though Shaun couldn't fathom how. "You're not the son I lost, and you're not the son I would have raised. You're the Institute's, and you have been all this time." An explosion rocked the room, but Shaun's heart burned stronger.

"I'm protecting humanity's future!" He flung the words at his father, hoping they would hurt. "We _are_ humanities greatest hope! There's nothing out there but death! How can you not see that?"

"What was her name, Shaun?" asked The Wanderer, and Shaun was incredulous.

"What?" What kind of question was that, and at such a time? "Who?"

"Your mother." His father's eyes would not stop staring at him. "What was your mother's name?"

"Her…" He'd known it once. "My mother's name…" He'd studied the files carefully, but… He understood why it had to happen, he never doubted that, and any wrong doing was never the Institutes fault, it was Kellogg's. "I…"

"The woman who gave birth to you, Shaun." His father's voice was free of all spite, all rage, all accusation. "She died trying to protect you from the institute. I buried her, you know. What was her name?" His father was just looking down at him.

"I…" It didn't make any sense. "I don't know."

"I know." The Wanderer took a deep breath, as if squaring something he had hoped not to be true. "And I know you don't know any of the names of all those people you've stolen. All the brothers, sisters, wives, and children you've murdered or experimented on over the years. They didn't even get to be buried." Shaun looked down, all thought gone, everything but pain and shame, and anger, all burned away by his father's words. "There's no humanity here for you to save."

The fighting continued, or perhaps more horrifically, it was dying down. Shaun's work was all but dead. Anger prevailed. "After everything I did for you. You, my father!" Petulant tears streaked down his dying cheeks. "How could you do this to us? To Humanity? To your own son?"

The Sole Survivor looked down at Shaun, considering with a non-seriousness that sent waves of despair throughout Shaun's being. Was he so beneath his father's eyes? He knew the words that would come, but he couldn't imagine their impact. "You're not my son, Shaun," he said, a sort of grieving on his face, "and you've lost all your humanity."

"Yes," replied Shaun, without even thinking. He was numb, and he was ready to die now. "Yes, I suppose you're right."

Grabbing his Musket, the Sole Survivor glanced out the window, and turned to leave. He had work to do. "Goodbye Shaun."


	3. Chapter 3

An End

With light steps, the Sole Survivor crossed the bridge. The gates opened well before he arrived, and the settlers-turned-guardsmen waved him in heartily. Laden with scavenged goods from the nearby settlements which had been left empty and untouched since his first rampage across the commonwealth, he gratefully unloaded his burden on the waiting men and women.

"That's a lot of stuff, General. Good work, now we just need to find a use for it." Preston, after the influx of settlers following the Institute's downfall, had abandoned his Minutemen clothes and duties, and instead began farming. Wearing the same salvaged old-world clothes as most of the settlers, he approached the Sole Survivor with a tension-free face, at last.

"I'm sure we'll find a use for it somewhere." Wanderer looked around at the place, at the safe haven they'd built. A thriving farm had been planted in the old playground behind the houses, and each of those houses was filled with families, there were even children, and more on the way. Next to the workshop, Mama Murphy had set up a canteen, though she did little of the cooking. Instead, children would congregate there each night, as she told wildly fascinating and suspicious stories about her journeys across the commonwealth, as well as what few the Sole Survivor had told her. Sturges, in what spare time he had between building homes and purifiers and defenses, had even built a bar at the end of the cul-de-sac, that was quickly becoming brighter and louder with each night. The place not at all as it had once been, but it was safe, it was warm, and it was home.

"What's the matter, General?" Preston asked. "Feeling a little old world blues?"

"A little, I suppose," Wanderer said, taking off his armor and putting his weapons away in the barracks, just beside the gate. "Look, I'm tired, I'm going to go rest, alright?"

"Of course, General, sorry to keep you. I'm sure Shaun is waiting for you."

"I'm sure he is." He looked down the road at his home, with the lights shining through the newly made windows, and didn't like the tension he felt. They hadn't needed any salvage, and he knew it. He just wanted to get away for a few days. He'd told Shaun that they were father and son, but… had he really felt that way?

He wiped the sweat off of his face, taking his time walking through the town. People greeted him, asked how he did, and he lingered with each of them, his steps slow in between. Synths were people. Nick had proven that, as had Curie, and all the other Synths he'd met. Still, was Shaun really his son? After meeting… Father, seeing what became of the child he'd lost, he knew his son was dead, and was glad for it. But then Shaun showed up. Father had programmed him to think they were father and son, but that was all. They were flesh and blood, in some way, and Shaun _thought_ it was true, but was that enough?

He'd spent the week since the Institute had been destroyed living with Shaun, spending time with him, getting to know him, despite how it pained him. Now, standing at the front door of their home, there wasn't anywhere else for him to go. Yet still he hesitated, and shivered. He didn't know what to do.

Shaun opened the door before he could. "Dad!" The young boy ran into his father, hugging him tightly. "You were gone for ages. Did you see anything cool?" The boy's enthusiastic chattering was infectious, and brightened Wanderer's sour mood, but the question remained in his mind.

"Not this time, I barely saw anything."

"Huh. Maybe you and the Minutemen got them all already. Or scared them off." The Sole Survivor stepped past his son and into their home. The windows had glass, the walls were patched up, and some of them even had paint on them. The whole place was lit healthily from the inside with the power they'd worked so hard to set up. Even Codsworth was there, busy humming in the kitchen over the afternoon meal.

"Maybe." It was almost like before, but those times would never come back. Nora was gone, so were his neighbors, their bodies strewn about the place, or underground still. The skies would never look as bright as they did, nor would the world ever look unburnt by the fires of nuclear war. His son, the baby that he'd played with on that last day, was dead. The boy in that house wasn't his son, not really, and they would never stop fighting to hold on to everything they had. The world was dead, and only ghosts of humanity remained.

But, Shaun was smiling, smiling at _him_ , and that seemed to defy everything. Nora would have wanted this, and maybe this wasn't the Shaun the Sole Survivor had hoped, or even expected to find, but this child was still human, was still calling himself Shaun. Was it enough?

"Dad?" Shaun asked, the smile sliding from his face. "Is everything alright? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Oh, sure it is," Wanderer said, shaking his head. "I just, uh…" He could see Nora in Shaun's features. "Yeah, sorry. Just real tired, is all. Let's go eat."


End file.
